A popular story meme in the media is “I moved abroad” stories – that falsely present the idea that Americans can easily move abroad (reality – they can’t).
Over 2+ years, I kept notes on about 400 such stories appearing in the “Travel” and “Lifestyle” news sections.
80% of the stories featured Americans moving to Europe – yet only about 20% (+/-) of Americans who moved abroad, moved to Europe. A little bias there, huh?
Perhaps up to 40% of Americans who have moved to another country, moved to Mexico or Canada – yet those stories represent about 2% (each) of the genre in the media!
If the media can show this much bias in a relatively benign topic, what sort of bias do you think they might show on other topics?
Media coverage of “I moved abroad” versus Reality – Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking
In the following chart, the tall blue column at left is the % of stories about Americans moving to Europe. The Orange, Green and light Blue columns next to it, are 3 different estimates of how many Americans actually live in Europe. You can read more about this here: Media coverage of “I moved abroad” versus Reality – Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking
You can see in the chart there is nearly no coverage of Americans moving to Mexico, Canada or nearly anywhere else in the world.
Why does this bias occur? Because the stories are written almost entirely by young, white, female, European ancestry, freelance writers who came from American privilege: Why Europe Dominates “I Moved Abroad” Stories – Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking
In fact, in about one third of the stories, the subject obtained her residency or citizenship visa via marriage, had attended a US private university, and generally came from a well-off background. Oddly, after benefiting from American privilege, a majority of the stories start by proclaiming that America is awful, therefore I moved abroad … which makes little sense.
